Jail term extended for bashing

Jail term extended for bashing - The West Australian

A 21-year-old man who is serving a three-year jail term for attacking a great-grandfather with baseball bat has been sentenced to another 20 months in jail.

Robert Geoff Collard was this morning sentenced to one year and eight months in jail after he pleaded guilty to breaching a suspended imprisonment order for armed robbery, aggravated burglary and criminal damage by attacking the 74-year-old in Camillo in October.

This morning’s sentencing comes just a day after the Director of Public Prosecution announced it would appeal the three-year jail term to which Collard was sentenced last month for the attack.

The Supreme Court was told this morning, that at the time of the attack Collard was on a two-year conditional suspended imprisonment order for a range of offences which he had already breached once before and was fined $100.

State Prosecutor Derrin Krueger said Collard committed the “absolutely horrific attack” on the great-grandfather just 25 days after being fined and a judge made the decision to allow him to continue on the order.

In October last year, the 74-year-old victim had been walking at night in the southern suburb of Camillo trying to find the owner of a lost dog when Collard, with a group of five juveniles, suddenly pulled a baseball bat from under his jumper and repeatedly hit him on the head.

Within hours of the attack, Collard boasted about the bashing on Facebook.

The victim, known as Wally, suffered a badly broken arm, two fractured ribs and a fractured vertebra. Collard was jailed for three years last month after pleading guilty to grievous bodily harm, which was aggravated because his victim was over the age of 60.

He was also sentenced to a further seven months behind bars after breaching another two-year suspended prison term for three separate assaults.

In court this morning, Mr Krueger said a pre-sentence report indicated there had been an “escalation in the severity” of Collard’s offending with regard to his “propensity for violence”.

He called for Justice Ralph Simmonds to activate the full two-year suspended imprisonment order which Collard this morning admitted to breaching.

Mr Krueger argued the sentence should be served cumulatively on top of the prison sentence which Collard is currently serving.

In his sentencing submissions, Collard’s lawyer Stephen Gabriel asked Justice Simmonds to mindful to impose a sentence which would not have a “crushing effect” on his client, who he said was immature and a young man of 21.

In sentencing Collard, Justice Simmonds said he had received “not one but two warnings” referring to his previous breaches of the suspended imprisonment orders.

“You have had opportunities to rehabilitate which on the face of it, you appear to have squandered,” he told Collard.

Justice Simmonds said the breach offence was “emphatically not trivial” and found it would not be unjust to have the sentence of imprisonment activated.

In deciding to activate the sentence in part, Justice Simmonds reduced the term of imprisonment to 20 months and ordered it to be served cumulatively on the three years and seven month prison sentence Collard is currently serving, meaning he has been sentenced to a total of five years and three months.

Justice Simmonds said Collard’s sentence had been backdated to November last year and with parole eligibility, he could be eligible for release after serving three years and three months.